Corvis Vritra
The world swam back into focus through a thick, syrupy haze of disorientation and profound exhaustion, deep as the ocean between Alacrya and Dicathen.
Every nerve ending screamed—a symphony of agony radiating from my abdomen, a bone-deep weariness that threatened to drag me back under, and the jarring, unfamiliar sensation of absence where my mana core should have pulsed like a second heart.
Then, a voice cut through the fog, bright and irreverent as a splash of paint on a tombstone.
"Wake up, punk rocker! We got some Gods to humble!"
My eyes snapped open, wincing against the soft, ambient light emanating from the Sanctuary Room's burning sconces—a Sanctuary Room? Perfect!
Hovering near me was a face both alien and unsettlingly familiar. A young man, perhaps twenty, with hair like spun sunlight and eyes the vivid blue of a tropical lagoon.
He wore an absurdly out-of-place dark blue coat, black trousers, and polished brown office shoes that looked more suited for a boardroom than the ancient, dusty reality of the Relictombs.
So you are the new instance of the Thwart? Finally, I projected the thought, the mental equivalent of a weary grunt. The familiarity wasn't coincidental.
He felt like a facet of myself, yet utterly distinct. And what about that 'punk rocker' stuff? Are you already peeking in my memories without an invitation?
A wave of exasperation washed over me. Fantastic. Another Romulos without the basic decency of privacy. The thought was laced with a pang of unexpected grief for my brother. Yet, beneath the annoyance, a flicker of desperate relief ignited.
I wasn't alone in this. I'd gambled everything, shattered my life, and landed here with a hole in my gut and a severed connection to the world's energy.
Having another iteration of myself, another Thwart, felt like finding a life raft in a storm-tossed ocean. Even if this particular raft seemed determined to whistle show tunes.
"Hey, you coul say hi," Leon chirped aloud, completely ignoring my internal monologue. He waved a dismissive hand. "By the way, I am Leon of Highblood Ainsworth." He announced it with a flourish, as if presenting credentials at a gala.
An Alacryan? I assessed, scanning the circular chamber—the white pillars, the central pool of still water, the soft light. That's actually advantageous, considering our location.
Relief, cold and sharp, cut through some of the pain. Ji-Ae's gambit had worked. We were out of Taegrin Caelum. We were alive. For now.
Leon's gaze drifted past me, landing on the crumpled form nearby. "Is that Caera Denoir?" His voice held genuine surprise, the levity momentarily replaced by sharp curiosity. "Damn. What's Seris's apprentice doing here with you… my other self? My mate? Pal? Duo?"
He tapped his chin, genuinely pondering the terminology.
"I need to think," I rasped, the sound scraping my raw throat. The pain was a constant throb, but the mental landscape was a minefield—assessing injuries, strategizing survival, understanding my surroundings, worrying about Caera, grappling with the void where my core used to be.
"Just be quiet for a second, please." The plea was edged with the frayed remnants of my patience.
"Oh, so you finally speak!" Leon beamed, as if I'd performed a delightful trick. "Sure thing, boss. I'm not going anywhere."
He leaned against a pillar and promptly started whistling—a jaunty, infuriatingly cheerful tune that clashed violently with the gravity of our situation and the pounding in my skull.
Can you NOT whistle?! I projected the thought louder, sharper, a mental shout.
He stopped mid-note, pouting theatrically. "Fiiine," he sighed, the picture of wounded innocence. "What a party pooper you are, man." He slid down to sit cross-legged on the dusty floor, a picture of forced nonchalance.
Can you read my thoughts? I demanded, suspicion warring with the inherent connection I felt.
His head snapped up, genuine affront on his face. "What?! No! I respect privacy!" He placed a hand over his heart, mock-offended.
Then what about 'punk rocker'? I cut in mentally, my focus shifting as I carefully pushed myself up, gritting my teeth against the white-hot lance of pain in my abdomen. You clearly lifted that from my Earth memories.
I needed to get to Caera. Ignoring the protest from my body, I crawled the short distance to her side, the cool stone biting into my knees.
"It's music!" Leon protested, his voice regaining its buoyancy. "You can't gatekeep music with me, my dear self! Shared consciousness perks! Besides," he added with a grin, "it suits your whole… brooding, defiant vibe."
You are surely a solar type, I shot back sarcastically, my attention fully on Caera now. Her breathing was shallow, rapid. Her skin was pale, clammy, radiating feverish heat beneath my tentative touch. A jagged tear marred the fine fabric of her sleeve, revealing a nasty gash on her arm, already inflamed.
Dried blood crusted her temple from a glancing blow. The physical injuries were bad, but the real damage was deeper. The Legacy wasn't just power; it was a cosmic tsunami forced into a vessel not meant for it.
Her body was a battleground, her consciousness likely adrift in the maelstrom. The stress of the ritual, the violent escape, Da—Agrona's near-fatal strike… it had all crashed down on her the moment relative safety was reached.
She was barely clinging to awareness, her eyelids fluttering but unable to open, her lips parted in silent distress.
"Nah," Leon countered, watching me assess her, his earlier flippancy tempered by observation. "It's just you that are gloomy, pal. You need some sunshine. Metaphorically speaking. This place is kinda dim."
I ignored him. My movements were stiff, each shift sending fresh waves of agony through my middle, but necessity overrode discomfort. With careful fingers, I retrieved one of the storage rings I had worn.
I summoned the spatial suitcase, the familiar weight a small comfort. As it clicked open, a soft, steady blue light pulsed from within—Ji-Ae's gem, encased and humming with ancient consciousness.
"Ji-Ae?" My voice was rough, strained. "Can you hear me?" I placed the open suitcase beside Caera's head, the blue light casting eerie shadows on her fevered face.
"Yes, Thwart." The response resonated not from the gem, but seemingly from the air itself, cool, precise, utterly devoid of inflection. "I can hear you."
A sliver of the tension in my shoulders eased. Ji-Ae was functional. A repository of Djinn knowledge, a navigator for the Relictombs.
Good, I thought, the word heavy with relief. I have Ji-Ae, Caera… and this infuriatingly sunny reflection of myself. It wasn't the army I needed, but it was something. Everything had gone perfectly… until Agrona's spike and the brutal revelation it delivered.
Gritting my teeth against the protest from my abdomen, I gripped the fine silk of the vest Dad made me wore—a vest now stained with my own blood. With a sharp tear, I ripped a strip free. The sound was loud in the quiet chamber. Leon made a small, appreciative noise.
"A true gentleman," he murmured, his tone shifting to something softer, almost… approving? I glanced up. He was watching my hands, a flicker of genuine respect in his blue eyes as he nodded slightly.
"After all," he added, the earlier levity gone, replaced by a quiet intensity that startled me, "that's the reason for us Thwarts, isn't it? We are heroes for the weak. The shield against the storm of evil gods."
His words struck a chord, resonating with the core purpose Romulos had sacrificed himself to preserve within me. I didn't acknowledge him aloud, but the sentiment settled, a small ember of shared understanding.
Focusing back on Caera, I dipped another torn strip of silk into the cool water of the central pool. The liquid felt blessedly cold against my skin. Gently, painstakingly, I began to clean the wound on her arm.
The inflamed edges were angry red, the gash deeper than I'd initially thought. I applied pressure with a clean, damp cloth, trying to staunch any residual bleeding I couldn't see beneath the makeshift bandage I fashioned from the silk.
Next, I folded another piece of the dampened fabric and laid it carefully across her burning forehead. Her breath hitched slightly at the cool contact, a faint sigh escaping her lips. A small sign, but a good one.
"Anyway," Leon piped up again, though his voice was lower now, observing my work, "I'm not asking why you have the Djinn mastermind responsible for managing Taegrin Caelum. No, sir. Don't wanna know."
A ghost of a smile might have touched my lips, buried beneath layers of pain and worry. Oh, I found someone non-sociopathic like my beloved big brother.
The thought of Romulos was a fresh ache, a phantom limb. His fierce loyalty, his dry wit, his unwavering presence. Maybe we could become friends quicker than I had been with Romulos… but the comparison felt hollow, almost disloyal.
Romulos and I hadn't just become friends; we'd forged an unbreakable bond in the crucible of shared sacrifice and defiance.
A relationship that transcended his death, surviving now as the bedrock of my resolve. Leon was… different.
"Ji-Ae," I asked aloud, my voice tight with the effort of leaning over Caera, the wound in my abdomen pulsing angrily. "Where are we? Exactly?"
"As you requested prior to transit," Ji-Ae's voice intoned, smooth and emotionless, "I brought you to a Sanctuary Room proximal to the location you know as the First Ruin."
Leon whistled, low and impressed. "I don't have any idea of what that is."
His commentary faded into background noise as I looked down at Caera's pale face. The makeshift compress seemed to be helping slightly; her breathing was a fraction less ragged.
"Do you think Caera is going to be fine?" The question left my lips before I could stop it, laced with a vulnerability I rarely showed—well, since my rebirth as Corvis Vritra.
She was a stranger, yet bound to me by Dad's design and my desperate rescue. Her fate felt intrinsically linked to my own failure… or success.
"Yes, Thwart," Ji-Ae responded without hesitation. "She is stabilizing. The Legacy integration is proceeding… atypically, but not catastrophically. Her body possesses latent resilience, likely augmented by her Vritra lineage."
"However, I would strongly suggest you focus on your own injuries. Your body suffered significant trauma and energy depletion."
My own injuries? A cold prickle of unease started at the base of my spine. The pain in my abdomen was immense, a constant, grinding agony, but I'd attributed it to muscle damage, bruising, the general trauma of being impaled by pure willpower.
I hadn't truly… looked. I'd been too focused on Caera, on Leon, on our location. Ji-Ae's words sliced through the denial.
Slowly, dread coiling like a frozen serpent in my gut, I looked down.
The fine fabric of my tunic was dark and stiff over my lower abdomen. Not just stained. Saturated. A ragged, fist-sized hole punched through the layers, ringed by scorch marks from the violent dissolution of Agrona's Blood Iron spike.
Through the torn fabric, I could see… meat. Ruined tissue. Glimpses of things that shouldn't be exposed to air. The edges were blackened, cauterized by Fate's abrupt intervention, but the center… it was a void. A grotesque, ragged puncture.
My breath hitched. Not just pain. Absence. A terrifying, fundamental wrongness.
My hand, trembling violently now, instinctively flew to my solar plexus. Not to the bleeding wound, but lower, seeking the familiar, comforting thrum of my mana core.
The dense sphere of swirling silver that had been my constant companion, my source of strength, my connection to the world's magic… Romulos's gift of control… Corvis Eralith's hard-earned power on the verge of white core…
Nothing.
A vast, silent, echoing nothing.
Panic, cold and absolute, slammed into me like a physical blow. It stole my breath, turned my vision grey at the edges. The Sanctuary Room tilted. The carefully constructed walls of Romulos's inherited calm, the defiance, the arrogance—they crumbled like sandcastles.
All that remained was raw, primal terror. Gone. It's gone. My core… my magic… my anchor… Agony wasn't just physical anymore; it was existential. The foundation of my being in this world had been obliterated. No! I don't want to be coreless again! Anything but that!
"Whoa, whoa! Easy there! Man, breathe! You're having a panic attack!" Leon's voice cut through the rising tide of hysteria, sharp and urgent, devoid of its usual levity. "In! Two! Three! Out! Two! Three! Four! Come on, boss, match me!"
His voice was a lifeline. Romulos. Remember Romulos. Remember... Dad. The thought surfaced through the suffocating fog.
I clung to his ghostly presence, to the iron will he'd bequeathed me. Gasping, I forced air into my lungs, matching Leon's counted breaths. In. Two. Three. Out. Two. Three. Four. The grey receded slightly. The world solidified, horrifyingly real. The pain roared back, a symphony of physical and metaphysical loss, but the edge of blind panic was blunted.
However… I lost my mana core… The realization was a cold, hard stone settling in the pit of my stomach, heavier than the wound itself. The implications crashed over me: helplessness, dependency, the end of my ability to craft, to fight, to wield Accaron, my foresight, everything to be anything but a burden like I have been all my life.
"Bad, bad stuff, Corvis, right?" Leon ventured cautiously, trying to inject a note of lightness, pointing at me with a grimace that was supposed to be sympathetic but looked more like a pained smile.
Yes. Corvis. I thought, the name feeling alien, a label for a ruined vessel. Corvis Vritra. Saying it mentally caused Leon to chuckle softly.
Do you have problems, lesser? I projected the thought darkly, a flicker of the Vritra heir's hauteur surfacing through the despair, a defense mechanism as flimsy as paper.
"No, no," Leon raised his hands placatingly, though his eyes held genuine concern beneath the act. "It's just… usually Vritras? Well, they don't exactly play white knights rescuing fair maidens. Or plot elaborate escapes against Agrona Vritra himself while rocking a hole you could fit your fist through. It's… unexpected."
That's because I am a real Vritra, I declared, the thought laced with defiance and a profound, aching loneliness. Last of my clan. Son of Agrona Vritra. Brother of Romulos Vritra. The titles felt like my only armor I no longer deserved, relics of a shattered identity.
Leon blinked, then burst out laughing—a genuine, surprised sound. "Son of who now? Man, you definitely need some rest. And maybe some strong painkillers made by a good Instiller. Seriously. Drink some water, close your eyes, and I will sing you a lullaby. Something soothing."
He gestured towards the pool.
Pfft. I could only manage a mental scoff, rolling my eyes despite the agony. After navigating Romulos's complex blend of arrogance, grief, and fierce loyalty, Leon's relentless, sunny-side-up personality felt almost… manageable.
Exhausting, but predictable. A different flavor of madness. I had survived one facet of myself; I could survive another.
Desperation clawed at me. Instinctively, I tried to sink into meditation, to seek the inner stillness that might offer some solace or insight. But the pathways were gone. Utterly silent. The familiar hum of gathering mana, the connection to the ambient energy—it was all severed.
The void where my core had been was absolute. No. The option of forging an aether core, like Arthur had done… it was a death sentence for this body. An elven physiology wasn't built for that raw, primal energy. It would consume me from the inside out. Another door slammed shut.
My gaze drifted back to Caera, her face peaceful in troubled sleep thanks to the cool compress. The fever seemed to be receding slightly. And then, a spark ignited in the darkness of my despair. A grim, ironic spark.
The same thing happened in the novel. Nico, his core shattered by Arthur and Cecilia, wielding the Legacy's power, repairing it.
A smirk, brittle but genuine, touched my lips. Romulos would tease me about this forever. The thought was bittersweet. Yes, Nico needed a wand to cast spells afterwards… but I had Against the Tragedy. My masterpiece. My shield. And now, stranded in the Relictombs, the birthplace of aetheric understanding, I could finally make it even better.
Not for mana only, but for aether too. A conduit. A focus. A way to be more than just a broken shell waiting for rescue.
"You seem… ecstatic, Corvis?" Leon observed, his head tilted, studying my expression. "That's the spirit! See? Perspective! You only need a smile, maybe a stiff drink when we find one, and you'll be perfect."
This excitement… it was pure Romulos, I realized. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge, his burning desire to explore the Relictombs, to unravel its secrets. A desire I'd inherited, amplified by my drive.
I will fulfill your wish, brother. The thought was a vow, whispered into the void he'd left behind. I will walk the paths you dreamed of.
The adrenaline that had sustained me through the escape, the confrontation, the panic, was finally ebbing. It left behind a crushing tide of exhaustion that threatened to pull me under. Every muscle screamed for respite.
The pain in my abdomen was a constant, grinding reminder of my fragility. The mental fatigue from holding Romulos's calm, Leon's chatter, Ji-Ae's presence, and the crushing weight of the loss of my Dad was immense. I swayed where I sat.
"Have a good rest, Corvis," Leon said softly, his usual flippancy replaced by something akin to respect. He gave a small wave. "It's been short, intense, and honestly? Kinda awesome. Can't wait to actually talk with you again when you're not, you know, actively bleeding out."
He offered a genuine, if weary, smile.
I managed a weak nod. "Ji-Ae," I murmured aloud, my voice barely a whisper. "If Caera wakes before I do… explain everything to her. Please."
The world was already blurring at the edges, the Sanctuary Room's soft light dimming.
"Understood, Thwart," Ji-Ae's calm, disembodied voice affirmed.